The Professional Facilitators Forum is a newly formed group in Hong Kong. As a critical step in our evolution we invited Chris Lonsdale to undertake the impossible assignment; to 'facilitate the facilitators'!

Chris's expertise and insight proved invaluable as we weaved our way through some difficult and taxing issues. The impossible became the possible."

"Chris Lonsdale facilitated a series of strategic working sessions for me and my staff at the end of year 2002. These sessions helped us tremendously to reach consensus on the common vision and mission of our organization."

HY Zhang, Director, Product IntegrityGlobal Beverage Company

"Personally, I have had the pleasure to participate in three separate off-sites/conferences in which Chris and his colleagues have acted as facilitators/coordinators. Chris is, by far, the most effective facilitator that I have ever encountered in my 15-year global investment banking career."

Helge Weiner-Trapness Managing DirectorGlobal Investment Bank

"The off-site made it possible for us to overcome the differences between our roles and come together much more as an integrated and powerful team. The fact that we had fully documented the path forward for the group by the end of the two-day meeting was, in itself remarkable.

Now, three months on, I can say that we are truly delighted with the very real progress that has been made in the business. Much of this progress can beattributed to the results that were achieved in the September off-site meeting."

Facilitation

Sales and Product Integration

One of the biggest challenges in any company is to get the "front line" and "back room" people to work effectively together. The misalignments that occur between sales people and manufacturing or product development are legendary. Live with these misalignments, and you can easily miss your targets. Create true alignment and you generate significant bottom line results.

The case below illustrates what is possible.

CASE STUDY

The situation

Our client was a multi-national financial institution operating throughout Asia-Pacific. For years, a lack of alignment had been creating tension between the two sides of the business-the sales-force on one hand, and product people on the other. Chris Lonsdale & Associates was commissioned to design a process that would integrate the activities of the sales and product functions and devise a strategy that could be rapidly executed within a 12 to 24 month period. A two-day offsite format was chosen for the meeting.

The participation

38 people from sales, product, and supporting roles participated from countries around Asia-Pacific including Australia, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong.

The process

To deal with the challenges we used a three-component approach:

a specially designed meeting with a series of steps that forced communication between individuals and functions, and generated high volumes of quality information exchange

a self-organizing process for identifying and addressing critical business issues

a consolidation process where recommendations were integrated into key project streams

The results

At the end of the meeting the group had a fully documented action plan that focused on resolving the major barriers to performance plaguing the business. Each participant at the meeting had contributed to identifying the issues, and had signed up for personal responsibility to action elements of the plan.

Three months after the off-site meeting, much of what had been agreed had been Implemented and was having a positive impact on the bottom line of the business.

Facilitation Services

Asked what kind of facilitation we do, we always answer "every kind." By its very nature, effective facilitation requires a bottom up approach. The key steps are:

understand the situation

understand the players

evaluate what is required to get the desired results

design a process that will achieve this result

facilitate the process

be ready to change everything at a moment's notice.

Every process we design is uniquely tailored to the needs of our clients. We do everything from one-off meetings, to facilitated processes that can take months to complete.

Results You Can Expect

Work with Chris Lonsdale & Associates to facilitate growth, development and change in your company and you can expect many positive changes: